


five letters and seven numbers

by bufudynes



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Alcohol, Bisexuality, Canon - Book, Introspection, M/M, Post-Graduation, Pre-FIllory, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 20:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9783827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bufudynes/pseuds/bufudynes
Summary: There's a special kind of magic that comes alive on the dance floor. Quentin lives in the moment, and in the moment his walls come down.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little introspective thing I wrote for a friend. Follows book canon, but show fans are certainly welcome to read as well.

There are nights when Quentin doesn’t know what to do with himself, when the lack of direction and the lack of motivation and the lack of any sort of excitement or drama in his life — aside from the interpersonal kind which he does his best to ignore — is too much. He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to leave the apartment. He may or may not want to curl up with a book, usually one of Plover’s but occasionally something more scholarly, if only to feel like he hasn’t completely lost touch with the elusive and all too easily forgotten magic he’d mastered at Brakebills. Sometimes, on nights like these when he’s already half drunk and hasn’t bathed in a day or two, Eliot will come by, and he’ll take him out to a bar or a club, and they’ll get even drunker and get high and for a time, things will feel alright. They’ll be exciting and magical in a mundane way, no mystical forces involved, just a simple alteration of brain chemistry. He can trick his brain out of the funk of depression, and for a few hours, he can be free.

Tonight is one of those nights.

The lights of the club feel as bright and wild as any showy spell designed to flash and pulse, and he can feel the music pumping through him; its powerful bass seems to make his entire body vibrate. This is what it feels like to not give a fuck, to not care about anything at all beyond the current moment. Quentin doesn’t know where Eliot is at the moment, and he doesn’t care, he’s too busy dancing hot and dirty with a girl he’s not even sure is particularly pretty, but in this moment she’s his everything, and when that moment inevitably passes and he loses her in the undulating crowd, it’s only a temporary loss. He moves on quickly — in fact, he’s forced to as a warm, firm arm grabs him around the waist.

It takes him a moment to realize the arm is male. It takes him an even longer moment to realize that it isn’t Eliot’s.

He examines his feelings about this development, as muddled and hazy as they are, and comes to a quick conclusion: he doesn’t care. It’s dancing, it’s harmless, and the man behind him has a nice arm, not too thick, not too hairy, his fingers are long and graceful, and it’s not an immediate turn-off. It’s actually sort of the opposite. 

The music slows down and the lights slow as well and Quentin’s heart, he’s sure, should definitely not be beating this fast in light of these facts, but he goes with it. He leans into the man behind him — god, he hasn’t even seen his face, but it feels right and he’s rewarded with the other man pulling him closer. They’re back to chest, now, and Quentin has some idea that the guy behind him is probably as tall as he is based on the height of his elbow. When he tilts his head back, it’s with some caution — even high, he knows well enough not to accidentally head-butt a stranger. He feels the man behind him place a bony chin on his shoulder, and he can hear him breathing near his ear.

They dance like that for a while, and it’s actually really refreshing. It’s different from dancing with a girl, since he’s usually the one holding a girl like this. It feels so different from this side, trusting someone else to hold him and touch him and guide him as they dance. He feels desired. He feels noticed and wanted. He can feel the hardness of the other man’s dick through his pants, pressing against his ass, and the first time he’d noticed it, he’d jumped, but now that he’s used to it, he can admit that it doesn’t feel unpleasant or wrong at all. It’s tangible proof that he’s worth something, that he’s doing something in his fucking life right, even if all that is is looking decent and dancing decently. This guy appreciates that, and Quentin’s body responds to that appreciation with its own. It’s slow to happen, but it does occur, especially when the man behind him begins to slide his hand underneath Quentin’s shirt, testing the limits of the trust they’ve built between the two of them, two strangers on the dance floor who haven’t even seen each others’ faces yet.

It’s euphoric. Quentin’s never felt so free, so alive. He doesn’t want to ruin it, but he has to know — what does his dance partner look like? He psychs himself up for it with every song that plays, daring himself to turn around, daring himself to acknowledge the fact that yes, he’s dancing with another man, and yes, he’s turned on by it. He needs to see his face, though. If he sees it and hates it, he can write this off as a fluke, as just another ecstatic experience colored bright and neon wonderful by the drugs in his system, but if he sees it and likes it, if he sees it and still wants to pull this stranger closer, to press their faces together, that’s a different story. That’s a story that would rewrite much of what he thought he knew about himself, all those random thoughts about other guys he’s swept under the rug since time immemorial. Maybe those random thoughts hadn’t been so random after all, and it’s time to find out. The time is now, it’s _time_ …

And so he turns around after the next song ends, and his eyes meet the warm brown ones of the young man who’s been grinding up on him for the better part of an hour. He doesn’t miss a single beat, and pulls Quentin in close, sure that he’s not going to jerk away the moment he sees his face, and he’s right. He has a really good face, warm and friendly, with a mischievous, crooked smile that reaches his eyes and makes them crinkle at the edges. He has long curly hair, almost as long as Quentin’s, and a dark complexion — maybe he’s Puerto Rican? Hard to say, and either way Quentin doesn’t care. His is exactly the kind of face Quentin would have formerly reluctantly noted was handsomely pretty in the straightest possible way, but somehow over the past hour or so his evaluation of this man’s potential attractiveness has peaked at “gorgeous”, or even “sexy”, if he’s being honest with himself.

And he is being honest with himself. There’s no reason not to be. No one is watching them, no one is judging them, they’re just two bodies dancing and getting their rush together, feeding off each others’ energy. He doesn’t think about how he’s actually pretty straight, thank you very much, or about what Alice would think, or about what Eliot would think, or about what anyone but what himself and this ridiculously good-looking guy will think, he just leans in, reaches for the back of the stranger’s neck with both hands, and catches his mouth with his own.

It’s not unlike kissing a girl. He tastes peppermint lip balm and a hint of some sour, alcoholic drink. The guy’s lips are soft, his tongue is smooth, and the only real difference he feels is in the lack of a height difference and the lack of a softness in the other man’s body to counteract his own sharp angles, but the angles aren’t nearly as sharp and unpleasant as he’d imagined they might be. He’s softer than he looks, and Quentin has to wonder how many other guys are softer than they look. Has he been missing out on something all his life? Even though the stubble he feels when they kiss is a little weird, Quentin doesn’t dislike it — it feels new and thrilling and a little naughty. All of this does. Had he really been missing out on this? God, he’s been such a closed-minded idiot this whole time! He’d believed in Fillory all his life, why hadn’t he stopped to think about _this_?

They touch and they dance and they kiss and at the end of it, they talk for a brief moment and his dance partner writes on Quentin’s forearm in green pen, “Caleb 555-8420”, and they part ways. Breathless, exhausted, more than a little horny, and feeling like the entire world is, in that moment, just a little bit brighter than usual, Quentin stumbles to the bar and finds Eliot, wrapped up in conversation with a guy who is not Caleb 555-8420. He ushers him out and away and they both give sarcastic little waves goodbye to the guy Eliot had been talking to. He probably thinks Quentin and Eliot are together or something, and while that isn’t true, for the first time Quentin wonders about it, about what that might be like, about what it could look like and feel like to be with his friend in that way.

But it doesn’t really matter. The moment they step outside the club and into the silent, chilly Manhattan air, the spell is over. The Circumstances are no longer aligned. Here it is again, this dark world of dirty streets and slushy snow, a world of muted greys and browns and lifeless buildings full of miserable people, one of whom is his girlfriend Alice, who’s probably sitting at home waiting impatiently for him to get back from another night of drugs, dancing, and alcohol. 

After a minute or two of walking and quiet contemplation, Quentin rubs Caleb 555-8420 from his arm, using his own thin sheen of sweat to blur the name and the number beyond recognition. Later, he’ll tell himself he doesn’t remember what had been there, but he knows. He remembers. He’s memorized thousands of unique Circumstances, there’s no way he’d forget five letters and seven numbers, and it’s impossible to fully erase a feeling.

Maybe someday he’ll feel that way again.


End file.
